Space agency United State, a NASAAnd the company SpaceX A spacecraft with four astronauts on board launched to the International Space Station on Friday (23).
This is the first team to go into orbit on a ship that was built from recycled materials from a previous launch.
A Falcon 9 rocket launched from SpaceX on April 23, 2021 – Photo: GoSkipper / Reuters
The capsule was launched at 6:49 a.m. (GMT) from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida, by a Falcon 9 rocket.
The space station is about 400 km from Earth. The astronauts are expected to arrive there on Saturday after a flight that took about 23 hours.
The launch of the rocket has a second stage, in which there is a new thrust so that the capsule in which the astronauts are located can continue to travel. This happened 10 minutes after launch.
Then the astronauts went into orbit.
Part of the missile fell on the platform of an unmanned ship in the Atlantic Ocean.
This is the second team launched by NASA since the United States resumed launches with astronauts from North American lands last year.
The country would have passed nine years without launching manned aircraft.
It is the third launch of the partnership between NASA and SpaceX, the company founded by billionaire Elon Musk and CEO of Tesla, the electric car maker.
This team includes two NASA astronauts (Shane Kimbro, 53, mission commander, and pilot Megan MacArthur, 49), a Japanese astronaut, Akihiko Hoshid, 52, and French specialist Thomas Pesquet, 43, agency engineer European space.
The four is expected to spend six months in space to conduct experiments and maintain the station before returning to Earth.
The four members of the team that were sent into space are scheduled to return in November on April 28.
Reusable auxiliary vehicles, designed to return to Earth and land safely once separated from the rest of the rocket, are a great innovation for SpaceX. The company plans to do this to make spaceflight more economical.
Pilot MacArthur is the second person in her family to travel aboard the SpaceX capsule: She is married to NASA astronaut Bob Behnken, who took part in a SpaceX show flight with fellow astronaut Doug Hurley last year.
If all goes well, the four will be received on board the space station on Saturday by seven astronauts already on the space station – three from NASA and one from the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, JAXA, two Russian astronauts and an American astronaut who participated in a vehicle. Soyuz. Flight.
